It has been some time since this blog, or indeed my other blogs have seen much active content.

This is largely due to the effect of lifestyle changes that go along with the move to Zielona Góra, the running of an agrotourism ranch with Elena, namely Agroletnica, as well as an increase in activity in the audit market post Covid which I also would not like to miss out on, as well as several other factors.

Today is the first day of Lent, it is Ash Wednesday. My colleague went early to church and recounted to me afterwards the sermon he heard relating to Lent not only being a time to repent of one’s sins but also to focus more on doing good.

Certainly part of “metanoia”, the New Testament term for repentance, is a desire to please God, even though we cannot please God other than by reflecting Jesus back at the father and being thankful and loving Jesus.  With this mindset, motivated by faith, our walk will surely please the Lord.

Metanoia, the change of mind, doesn’t mean a casual alteration of our opinion, but the entre shift of perspective form what pleases us, selfishly, to what pleases God.

In a sense it is like the change that happens in the child from the id and ego mind to the super-ego (parental voice) mind in Freudian terms, but Christians know that this is merely a type of what happens in the change of mind when our true Father changes the heart so that the perspective is now to see what we have been in terms of how God views the sin, which automatically brings both a disgust at our own past failures as well as the determination to improve and to please God the best we poorly can.

When it comes to the world, however, there is no way to please them.  Now in this media age more than ever people try to be popular, strive to do what the bible terms “men pleasing”, but in fact society these days is set up in such a way that it is impossible to please them.

St Paul tries to “be all things to all men, so that he by all means might save some”, resulting in the old phrase, “you can’t please all the people all of the time”. It seems to me though that now there is simply no pleasing certain people. There are some voices who are now dictating the culture in western society who will never be happy with the Christian no matter what he or she does, and there is nothing we should be surprised about with that, neither should we kow-tow to their modern shibboleths.

For example, if you say that you support indigenous people to maintain their own cultures, then you will be blamed for bringing the Gospel to those places as it undermines their cultures. The statement that indigenous cultures of peoples untouched by the Gospel should be protected is one they might agree with, but you would have no right to make it without that comeback. They of course woud love to flood their cultures with Communist literature, but they have never really made a very good job of that on their own and only ever piggy-backed on the work of Christians who transcribed languages using their Shoebox program, described grammars, prepared dictionaries, opened schools, translated Bibles, etc. They cannot flourish without the planting work done by Christians any more than Globodera nematodes can if nobody plants potatoes, but that doesn’t stop them branding what we do as imperialist, colonising, etc etc etc.  We should not be contaminating these indigenous cultures, they say.

If we say that the Western Christian culture is also good and has a right to exist uncontaminated, then we are accused of being on the far right, practically Nazis or Ku Klux Klan.

If we say in that case we will adopt some elements of these native cultures and then wear headdresses or anything like that (which I advise against by the way as some have occultic significance of which we may be unaware) then the kettle really begins to whistle, because this is “cultural appropriation”. We aren’t good enough to adopt their culture, but they are allowed to adopt ours but only if they want to.

Basically they hate Christian legacy and will do anything to oppose it, because their thinking is straight from the devil.

If you try to help in Africa, you are an unwanted “white Saviour” as Communist David Lammy said against Stacey Dooley in recent history. If you don’t, then you are a hard hearted hypocrite.

You cannot win, with them, the only way to win, as the movie says, is not to play.

They say that cats are contrary creatures and my mother used to say that the best way to make a cat like you is to ignore them completely. In the case of the Godless left, ignoring them won’t make you like them either, but it may be at times the only way to deal with them.

Of course, we need to give them the Gospel, but the model of our Lord was to send the disciples out and if the message was scorned like that, they were to shake the dust from off their feet and take it elsewhere.

This may remind us of the dust and the ashes that we place on our heads at the start of Lent. We are but dust, the dust and ashes of the burnt whole sacrifices reminds us of the cross of Jesus so some people put an ash cross on their foreheads.

We have to recognise that the humility of the Saviour is such that He will stoop to save the lowest, but the dignity of the Saviour is such that we ought not to leave Him stooping as he is mocked and put to scorn.